The sound of the music known as rai has wafted from its native Algeria to nearly all corners of the world in recent years. And yesterday, rai lost one of its greatest and earliest performers. Cheikha Rimitti died in Paris. The news was announced solemnly on Algerian television news. Cheikha Rimitti was Algeria's Bessie Smith. She sang her country's version of the blues.

And like Bessie Smith, she was a rebel. She entered a territory that had been accessed mostly by men. And she took it places it had never been before.

Cheikha Rimitti was born Saadia Bediaf in the 1920's. Rai was already popular, and a few women had already begun to sing it. That's an old 78 of the early Rai singer Cheikha Tetma.

Cheikha is an local word for a female singer who achieves renown. And Cheikha Tetma served as a role model for the young orphan who would later become Cheikha Rimitti.

Cheikha Rimitti was twenty years old when she became friends with a group of musicians.

They took her under their wing, and often gave her lead vocals in cabarets and cafes, where rai was a staple of the musical diet. Rai roughly translates as is "testifying." In her early days, Cheikha Rimitti testified about the ravages of epidemics that spread through Algeria. And before long, she became more courageous in the topics she took on.

Cheikha Rimitti

"Charrag Gattaa" was Cheikha Rimitti's first hit in Algeria. It translates as "torn and slashed." And the song is a description of a relationship with an abusive man who takes her virginity. Cheikha Rimitti's lyrics were more explicit than just about anything Algerians had heard before, at least from a female singer.

In "Charrag Gattaa," she sings, "he crushes, whips and beats me.
I say I'm going away, but I still spend the night. Pitiful me. I've developed bad habits."

In the sixties, the new independent Algerian government took a dislike to Rimitti's lyrics. They essentially censored her. And from that point on, Cheikha Rimitti spent most of her life abroad. But she continued to place herself at the cutting edge of rai. Even before fellow Algerian expatriates like Rachid Taha and Cheb Khaled would become the darlings of world music afficionados, Cheikha Rimitti had ventured into new sounds.

In her seventies, Cheikha Rimitti recorded the seminal album "sidi Mansour." The 1993 release featured the British art-rock guitarist Robert Fripp, and bass player Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In the hands of these three, rai simply exploded.

And just last year, Cheikha Rimitti continued to prove that, even in her eighties, she wasn't going to sit still stylistically. Even in exile, Cheikha Rimitti never lost touch with the plight of her Algerian sisters struggling under the constraints of Islamic tradition back home.

And Algerians of both sexes never lost touch with her.

Cheikha Rimitti died of a heart attack.

She was 83.